Analyzing Customer Reviews for Unilever Brands Online

All aspects of eCommerce can be controlled by a brand, except for one area that is completely in the hands of the user; product reviews and ratings.

As competition grows within the marketplace where most online customers start their purchasing journey, this aspect has become a reliable filter to help other users decide based on the eternal phrase: “to buy or not to buy.”

On most eCommerce sites, customers can sort products from its highest to lowest average rating; this means scoring high, gives brands more visibility and a competitive advantage over competitors. Better product ratings, better purchase rates, makes sense right?

But scoring a high rating alone is not enough to convince customers to add their products to cart; it’s what the reviews are saying that drives others to buy, especially in Asia where an average of 22% customers utilize online reviews as a decision making factor — the highest globally — due to the strong community effect in Asia.

By aggregating the major consensus of what customers are saying in their reviews, brands can leverage upon reviews to improve their performance online. How do they do this?

Data-analytics platform BrandIQ, has developed a Voice tool that collected reviews for four of Unilever’s brands – Dove, Rexona, Simple, Toni and Guy – on Lazada Philippines, to showcase what companies can learn from this set of data apart from the generic complaints.

42% of the reviews were, predictably, about the touch and feel of the products, but approximately 58% of the reviews actually shed light on aspects other than product quality.

What were they saying?

To sort the data, reviews are split into five main categories: Product, General, Delivery, Packaging, and Customer Service.

From the data above, delivery is the second most quoted the reviews.

Further splitting customer reviews into two sentiments: positive and negative; helped identify the strengths and weaknesses of these category areas to let the company know which area should be prioritized for improvement.

For Unilever brands, despite the small numbers of reviews that talk about Package, the category racked up a strong positive sentiment compared to the other four categories; except Service, which contributes only marginally to the reviews. This signals the satisfaction that customers felt after seeing that the products they ordered are taken care of until they reach them with the packaging that the company used still intact.

Customer reviews are a unique aspect of eCommerce, and offline retail outlets has rarely had to face them before. Brands looking to crack the code on online marketplaces will need to build an understanding for this new metric, and use it as a tool to their advantage.